State Museum will reopen on Sundays

The State Museum will once again become a weekend refuge for Capital District parents.

The museum will be open on Sundays beginning September 16, according to the state Education Department. It will now be closed on Mondays, which has the lowest attendance.

“The Museum is a great public resource and a great public treasure,” state Education Commissioner John King said in a statement. “Our goal is to make that resource as available as possible.”

The museum was closed on Sunday starting in January 2011 as a result of state budget cuts. Before that, Sundays were the second busiest day, after Saturday, and represented 20 percent of attendance. The museum had been open seven days a week from the 1970s through 2010.

There was an old statute mandating the library remain open Monday through Friday, which forced state education to choose between one of the weekend days for closure. However, Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoed that legislation almost a year ago to make it easier to reopen on Sundays. Under the new provision, it must be open eight hours a day, five days a week.

Education Department officials explained they chose to maximize cost savings by closing the entire building, which in addition to the museum houses the state archives and library. The archive is closed on the weekend, so the only days available for total shutdown were Saturday or Sunday.

Parents of young children view the museum as a lifeline in the long winter months, when there are few indoor learning activities that allow kids room to explore. The museum is free to visitors.

The new hours for the museum are 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

The reopening on Sundays come just as the Museum introduces a new exhibit, New York in the Civil War, which open on September 19.